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"It was [H.G. Wells'] adolescent fiction, his imaginative stories, that live forever - and yet are not acknowledged in literature classes as being great literature. So to hell with the academics!"
- Greg Bear
 |
| Heighliner | ||
| Enormous starship used by the Spacing Guild for interstellar travel. |
In the Dune universe, the Spacing Guild had a complete monopoly on interstellar travel. The major carrier was the heighliner, a ship large enough to carry even military troop carriers between stars. Once placed in a planetary orbit, ships within the heighliner were free to land using powered flight through normal space.
| "Are the Guild ships really big?" he asked.
The Duke looked at him. "This will be your first time off planet," he said. "Yes, they're big. We'll be riding a Heighliner because it's a long trip. A Heighliner is truly big. Its hold will tuck all our frigates and transports into a little corner -- we'll be just a small part of the ship's manifest." "And we won't be able to leave our frigates?" "That's part of the price you pay for Guild Security. There could be Harkonnen ships right alongside us and we'd have nothing to fear from them. The Harkonnens know better than to endanger their shipping privileges." |
| Technovelgy from Dune,
by Frank Herbert. Published by Putnam in 1965 Additional resources -
|
The heighliners were guided by Guild Navigators, users of the spice melange, whose prescient ability enabled them to find the best course:
"They're searching for me," Paul said. "Think of that! The finest Guild navigators, men who can quest ahead through time to find the safest course for the fastest Heighliners, all of them seeking me . . .and unable to find me. How they tremble! They know I have their secret here!"
The ships used a Holtzman generator, which folded space; this mode of travel seemed to take no time. The Guild Navigator determined the best path through fold space.
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'The crawling... object was V-Stephen's surgeon-hand...'
'Joe got out the gravity-simulator harnesses...'
'You couldn't have the capstone without the pyramid to hold it up.'
'the unobtrusive inspections with tiny remote-cast snoopers...'
I'm hoping that this procedure becomes a normal part of medical practice!
'... nothing was perfected until M. Pantalon announced the completion of his automatic valet.'
'...its streets were of remarkable width, with few or no buildings so high as mosques, churches, State-offices, or palaces in Tellurian cities.'
